Permaculture and universal energies are available to each and everyone of us. We can sow, plant and grow without the use of chemicals, pesticides etc. and use the universal energies the way our ancestors would have done.

Growing food can be done economically, it need not cost a fortune and can be done on a small or large scale from window boxes to acres, putting it within reach for everybody. So we can nourish our bodies with good healthy clean food.

Here at Gaudin Gardens we believe in the three R's – Recuperate - Re-use - Recycle. The gardens were inexpensive to set up just time and effort plus Mr O just happens to have a mini digger and a quartz crystal pendulum.


Thursday, 8 March 2018

From Raw Fleece to Warm Clothing

The ground has been frozen for over a week here in Brittany and now the thaw has come so has the rain. There's not much getting done in the gardens, so as promised, a post on how I process my raw fleece into wearable garment

Our sheep are sheared once a year at the end of May begining of June

Shearing 2013
I skirt (take off all the dung tags and scraggy bits) the fleece and remove as much vegetable matter as I can.


I use two different methods of souring/washing the fleeces depending on what I want to use the yarn for and if I want to have the lanolin left in.

Method 1

I wash the fleece in hot water and soap. This removes all suint which is natural grease formed from dried perspiration found in the fleece and lanolin. Sheep’s fleece contains both suint and lanolin which are to different things. Rinse a few times and leave to dry outside on racks


Method 2

I leave the fleece to soak in cold water taken from the well for 7 days, letting nature do the work. During this cold soak the suint and dirt breaks down and washes out of the fleece, leaving a clean fleece that contains the natural lanolin found in sheep’s fleece. I then leave it for a day in well water to rinse, I will do a couple of rinses. After a week of soaking the fleece smells like a farmyard but it disappears out of the fleece once it its air dried outside on racks, that’s how you can tell that the fleece is completely dry ready for storing or processing.


Once the wool is dry its ready for processing into yarn. I card it or comb it ready for spinning.

If the wool has a lot of straw and chaff in it then I like to use combs as the straw and chaff will drop out in the process, if the wool is free from vegetable matter then I card it on my drum carder.

Once the wool is combed or carded its spun into singles in a clockwise direction then two singles are plied together anticlockwise, to make a balanced yarn. 

The yarn is then left to soak in warm water with a drop of dish soap for about 20mins, rinsed and hung out to dry this sets the twist. Once the yarn is dry its ready for knitting or dying.



I do use commercial dyes and if done correctly all of the colour is taken up into the yarn and the clear water that's left can be disposed of.

There you have it, a brief summery of my way of processing raw fleece. Its quite a time consuming process but well worth it as we can wear pure wool sock and jumpers to keep us warm in the cold weather at very little or no cost. 

Some of the garments I've made with my hand spun wool

The socks in the photo below I made about 8 years ago and I knitted new feet  on them as the original ones had been darned too many times 


Until next time, Blessings to all
Vanessa


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